America’s best weekly Sandstone Quarry Apartments honors the Freedom House Ambulance Service See Page A8
Pittsburgh Courier NEW
www.newpittsburghcourier.com Vol. 114 No. 13 Two Sections
MARCH 29-APRIL 4, 2023
thenewpittsburghcourier Published Weekly $1.00
PITTSBURGH JOB CORPS CELEBRATES WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH
Michelle Gainey, other panelists offer ‘honest’ advice on navigating the workplace by Rob Taylor Jr. Courier Staff Writer
Oftentimes, being a woman in the workplace is tough. People doubt your abilities. People want to pay you less. People don’t want to give you the promotion. Pittsburgh’s Job Corps hosted a “Women at Work” open house and panel discussion on March 10, and the young women ages 1624 received a mighty dose of honesty from the women on the panel. Those women included Pittsburgh’s First Lady, Michelle Gainey, who brought the realness. “I’ve faced challenges in most places that I worked,” she told the students. “What I’ve learned is how to do me. What I’ve grown into is how to carry me and how to own me so I can go in a space, and sit at a table and hold my head high and use my voice so that you can still clearly hear me.
It’s not easy. Don’t always be quick to speak, but be quick to pay attention, watch with your eyes and listen with your ears, and take every experience, every interaction, and think about it, because that’s how we all grow.” Gainey then told the students that she once worked a job, “where I had to go outside and walk around the building. I had to put my earphones in my ears and I had to get some gospel music going, and call my husband or my bestie, so I (wouldn’t) go back in my job and lose my mind.” The Job Corps students were all ears after that story. “But it took me a long time to get there,” Gainey added. “It took me a lot of watching other people make those mistakes and flip a table, cuss somebody out, lose their job...I watched a young lady get SEE WORKPLACE A4
PITTSBURGH’S FIRST LADY, MICHELLE GAINEY, gives honest advice about women in the workplace at the Pittsburgh Job Corps panel discussion, March 10. (Photo by Rob Taylor Jr.)
Public art vs. property rights: Artist and property owner face off over a mural in Wilkinsburg by Betul Tuncer PublicSource
On a Sunday around September of last year, just as Erica Givner’s husband was getting ready to throw something into a dumpster, local muralist Kyle Holbrook parked in a clearing on the side of Givner’s property. According to Givner, Holbrook had paint in the back of his truck and was preparing to “tag” a mural on the side of her building, and told her husband that they couldn’t touch his artwork without his permission. The encounter took place some time after Givner painted over one of Holbrook’s old murals
that was on her recently renovated building at the intersection of Wood and Franklin streets in Wilkinsburg. Coincidentally, the police happened to pass by during the encounter and helped manage the dispute. The police took Holbrook’s information down and he left, saying that the property owners will be “getting papers in the mail.” While the murals were painted more than a decade ago, Holbrook is citing the Visual Artists Rights Act and contending that the property owner can’t modify his murals in any way—even if it means SEE PUBLIC ART A9
Pittsburgh Courier NEW
To subscribe, call 412-481-8302 ext. 136
ERICA GIVNER stands in front of Vision Towards Peace, on Wood Street in Wilkinsburg on Feb. 15. By the time her renovations and exterior modifications were complete, much of the original mural on 613-619 Wood St. was damaged, so Givner decided to paint a fresh coat of paint on the building. (Photo by Amaya Lobato-Rivas/PublicSource)